Find Corby Glen on a map

The Virgin’s mother St. Anne is the taller figure at the left, dressed like a pious 14th century lady and with her left arm around her daughter. The Virgin, dressed in a robe which was once blue, haloed like St. Anne and with her hair loose, is reading not from a conventional book, but from something that looks like an alphabet primer or horn-book used to teach medieval children their letters. She is probably now the youngest Virgin painted in the English parish church, the few scenes that remain of her own birth being barely identifiable.

A very few other examples of this subject remain. One, newly on the site, is at Chalfont St. Giles in Buckinghamshire, and another, soon to have its own page, is visible in the photograph of St. Eloi & the Possessed Horse at Slapton in Northamptonshire. But it is easy to confuse the scene with paintings of the Virgin and Child, and some paintings, for example a (forthcoming) faint one in a window-splay at Little Tey in Essex, have been misidentified as such. Corby Glen itself has a painting of the Virgin & Child at the Nativity, but a more useful one for comparison between the two subjects is the Virgin & Child at Wickhamford in Worcestershire.

Website of St. John the Evangelist, Corby Glen

St. Anne teaching the Virgin to read, Corby Glen, Lincs	St. Anne & Virgin/Miracles of Virgin, Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks	Annunciation/Visitation, Ashampstead, Berkshire	Annunciation, Barnby, Suffolk
Annunciation, Chalgrove, Oxon.	Annunciation, Little Melton, Norfolk	Annunciation, Gisleham, Suffolk	Annunciation, Slapton, Northants
Annunciation, Sth. Newington, Oxfordshire	Annunciation, Tarrant Crawford, Dorset	Annunciation, Martley, Worcestershire	Annunciation/Visitation, Faversham, Kent
Annunciation/Visitation/Nativity, Newton Green, Suffolk	Annunciation/Visitation, Pinvin, Worcs	Annunciation-Fring, Norfolk	Visitation, Dale Abbey, Derbys
Visitation, Salisbury (S.Thomas), Wilts.	The Burial of the Virgin, Pickering, N.Yorks	Death, Burial & Coronation of the Virgin, Sutton Bingham, Somerset	Coronation of the Virgin, Black Bourton, Oxon
Background to Statue, with painted angels, Brent Eleigh, Suffolk	Virgin Enthroned, with angels, Arundel, Sussex	Virgin Enthroned, with donors, Cawston, Norfolk	Life of the Virgin, Broughton, Oxon.
Virgin & Child, with wand and apple, South Newington, Oxford	Virgin & Child, with sceptre & orb(?), Wickhamford, Worcs.	Virgin suckling the Christ Child, Beckley, Oxon.	Virgin suckling the Christ Child, Belchamp Walter, Essex
Death, Burial, Assumption & Coronation of the Virgin, Chalgrove, Oxfordshire	Virgin intervening at the Weighing of Souls, Lathbury, Buckinghamshire NEW

11/4/2002

© Anne Marshall 2002